How to make Homemade Pasta at Home

Although it’s not traditional, we add a little olive oil to pasta dough. Some chefs add milk, but a fragrant oil is a better foil for the eggs. Once you’ve made the dough shape it into noodles. Makes about 1 pound fresh pasta.

Dry Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose fl our, plus more for dusting and to keep the dough from sticking
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients
3 large eggs, at room temperature, lightlyrnbeaten (see Note)
2 tablespoons olive oil

To make pasta by hand:
1. Whisk the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make a small well, piling the dry ingredients up the sides; or dump the mixture out onto a clean, flat work surface and make a well in the center of the pile.
2 Place the wet ingredients in the well. Using a fork, begin beating the wet ingredients, adding a little of the dry mixture from the well’s walls.
3. Whisking with the fork, incorporate more and more of the dry ingredients into the wet. Once the mixture in the center turns pasty, start collapsingthe well’s walls into the wet ingredients, whisking in more and more of the fl our mixture until a wet dough forms. If you’re working in a bowl, when the dry ingredients have been almost all incorporated into the wet, turn the contents of the bowl out onto a clean, dry work surface.
4. Knead the dough just until it holds its shape, incorporating as much of the dry ingredients into the wet as possible. Use the heel of one hand to press gently into the dough, twisting without tearing as you incorporate the dry ingredients. Add a few drops of water if the dough is brittle, a little more flour if it’s sticky. (On any given day, flour and eggs have varying moisture contents; pasta can end up slightly drier in one batch than another.)
5. Divide the dough into 4 lemon-sized balls. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest at room temperature for 10 or 15 minutes to relax the glutens before continuing.

To make pasta in a food processor:
1. Place the dry ingredients in a food processor fitted with a chopping blade. Pulse a couple of times to combine.
2. Add the wet ingredients all at once. Process just until a dough begins to form.
3. Turn the barely cohering dough out onto a clean, dry, lightly floured work surface. You will now undoubtedly need to add more flour than you would to the handmade pasta dough because of the way the food processor disassembles the proteins and glutens in the dough. Follow the remainder of the kneading instructions from step 4 on the preceding page.